What Is Content Curation Curation is an active filtering of the web’s infinite content and it may be the most disruptive Internet marketing tactic. Curators do more than simply assign meta value via categorization.

Disruptive & Exploding Content CurationWish I could tell you I plan to write sentences that will resonate and define something like content curation in a helpful way. The plan is to LOVE what I do and want to share it as often and as many ways as possible almost everything after that is accident (lol).

Content curation is about to explode. It has too, as Scoop.it's CEO Guillaume noted a good argument could be made that all content that ever needs to be created already has. This means the shift is to the curators.

I read something attributed to uber-curator Maria Popova. She supposedly said each time an Internet marketer uses the word "curator" real curators kill a kitten. Popova was being dramatic, but I take her point.

Our "curation" is digital curation - the active filtering, theming and organizing of a monster fire hose of content pointed at all of us. Our ability to read and make sense of the world may mean we are all "curators". A contemporary life requires curation.

Wish I could plan my day to create another piece of content as well received and helpful as this Curatti.com post, but it doesn't work that way. Better to focus on digging the ditch that needs digging than worrying too much about "viral marketing" or "legacy" content (is my thinking :). M

In 2002, professors Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham, two of the best known academic researchers on goal-setting, wrote an article in American Psychologist summarizing their 35 years of research. Among their findings:

Setting specific, difficult goals consistently leads to higher performance than just urging people to do their best.

High goals generate greater effort than low goals, and the highest or most difficult goals produce the greatest levels of effort and performance.

Tight deadlines lead to a more rapid work pace than loose deadlines.

Making a public commitment to a goal enhances personal commitment.

Whether the goal is set by mutual agreement or by the boss alone doesn’t make a big difference in goal achievement.

I use a checklist like this when preparing to lecture a course. Starting from the students' previous year feedback has been a good motivator for the preparations. Hope you find the list helpful.- And thanks to the University of Helsinki for offering all the necessary tools to put it into practice.

Problem-based learning ( PBL) is a student-centered pedagogy in which students learn about a subject through the experience of creating a problem. Students learn both thinking strategies and domain knowledge. The PBL format originated from the medical school of thought, and is now used in other schools of thought too.

Discussion around the theme of how positive surprises should be useful for learning. There is good common sense justifications for the importance of surprises. The connection of learning to observations in neuroscience is interesting and should be elaborated more. The 7 tips are in any case worth trying.

Moodle is a magnificent free product and has the potential to enable schools and teachers to build wonderfully unique interactive online learning courses in which learner interaction can be tracked, measured and responded to. Despite this the vast majority of Moodle courses I see are a long list of Word and PDF documents with at best a few forums that enable a minimum of human social interaction.
Via Nik Peachey, Elizabeth E Charles, Reijo Kupiainen

Mikko Hakala's insight:

Problems and possibilities of Moodle (and other similar platforms) outlined by Nik Peachey:

* Why Moodle courses often suck?

Not so intuitive platform to work with, lack of teacher training and skills to create online learning material (I agree with these points), excess security issues.

* What to do to improve.

* Comment about ready-made courses.

There are various problems, for example these often contain little student-teacher or peer interaction. I agree that the ready-made digital material, in my experience, is not very personalisable (and therefore difficult to teach in an inspired way).

* How to develop your Moodle skills?

The post gives 9 links to practical video tutorials (how to create a quiz, add a youtube, etc.). There are also free Moodle platforms to practice.

Nik makes some great points about Moodle - or really putting any content online - there has to be instructional design training, online teaching training or blended teaching training and how to select content for online delivery. technical training alone is not enough.

Mark Sandy, blogger in CTQ (@teachingquality), reminds in his post that sense of trust and relationships are the key in education. The students and teachers are responsible to one another. Easy to agree with this.

Steven Anderson shares a good blog post on his teaching of Periodic Table and learning that formative assessment.matters. It's a strong story saying that formative assessment, in one way or another, should be incorporated in the lessons. This can be done traditionally or with EdTech tools.

Feedback at the end of the class, or real time, and quizzing are examples of ways to do this assessment.

Digital technology and, for that matter, any tool are not the key to teaching and learning. The relationships which exist between teachers, students, and subject matter are essential. Teaching is about being aware and making sound decisions in choosing the best tool for the right situation. What if we invested money in smaller classroom size and less in the digital technologies?

This is an interesting article about the investigation of the high-performing Finnish schools, and the fact that their classrooms are fairly low-tech (particularly given that we are spending a lot of money each year on edtech). It seems that the teacher is still the defining element in the classroom, regardless of which technologies students have access to.

An interview with Peter Hirst, director of Executive Education at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Mikko Hakala's insight:

An interesting interview, from university perspective, about issues when we go beyond face-to-face interaction in on- and off-line learning and working. The digital tools allow both mimicking real-life interaction and something completely different.

The last few years I taught I was down to 3-4 hours most nights. It was not good. Since I left teaching, I am back to 8 hours a night. The problem was not what happened in the classroom, but dealing with adults who thought they knew more about what I did.

I have started to use quizzes in the beginning of my lectures. The questions are about the topics in the previous lecture. Here's why I think this is beneficial for learning and for the teacher him/herself:

1) The teacher can choose questions that highlight the most important (must-know) content of the past lecture.

2) It shows fast which concepts are more difficult than what the teacher initially thought.

3) We can spend more time on the difficult topics (selective review of past material).

4) The quiz can be done in groups with peer-learning possibility.

5) The students bring up new viewpoints and unexpected interpretations of the questions.

6) It shows the overall level of students' capacity and speed of learning new things.

7) The quiz questions can be used in the final exam.

8) As it's based on already taught material, it's not 'forced' problem-solving before having the resources.

Content curation in relation to students' work and assignments is discussed in this blog post by Ibrar Bhatt. (And more general, what implications content curation could have for education.)

From the revised Bloom's taxonomy perspective, curation could be seen next to creation at the highest level, see Steve Wheeler's great post on this: http://sco.lt/66Yxwf, (The post had a big influenced when I started with Scoop.it and ZEEF.)

I think this fits into Harold Jarche’s simpler seek-sense-share framework.

Why does this matter? If curation is all that Tufte and Bhatt say it is, then why aren’t scaffolds like these being used more often for training and in learning systems? I am using the curation tool Scoop.it to do curation with my freshman comp students. They use Scoop.it as their introductory platform for beginning to acquire the skills Tufte enumerates above that are part of the academic and business spaces they will eventually live in. I am hoping they will demonstrate why it curation matters as they seek-sense-share their way to long and short form ‘texts’ that they will be writing all semester. That will include essays, tweets, G+ community posts, blog posts, research papers, emails, plusses, favs, instagrams, zeegas, slideshares, pictures, and a massive mobile presence from their own digital spaces. Wish me luck.

"A curator, therefore, whether she is a journalist-by-proxy such as Popova or a student completing an assignment in a classroom, not only collects and interprets, but also creates a new experience with it."

This post by Jan Jensen explains in detail how a flipped science course could be organized. It contains concrete explanations about the 'lectures', homeworks and how the curriculum was chosen. The background pedagogical considerations are also discussed.

"Project based learning is a teaching learning methodology that has been widely praised for its efficacy in enhancing learning achievements.The premise underlying PBL revolves around getting students engaged in authentic learning events through the integration of mini-projects in class. These projects can be as short as one day and as long as a year. However, there is a difference between mere projects and project based learning. This table from Teachbytes provides a great illustration of the nuances between the two concepts."

Excellent table reminding about the difference between projects and project based learning. Projects are too easily assigned as exercises to students, without paying attention to the issues on the right hand side of this table.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.